


My Empire of Dirt

by SweetVenom



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, References to Torture, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 17:16:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11212599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetVenom/pseuds/SweetVenom
Summary: "The Charlatan used my own people to beat up Kaetus. He's alive - barely".





	My Empire of Dirt

“Kaetus? Kaetus!?” Sloane's voice rang with desperation as he felt her grasp his arm to feel for a pulse. He managed a raspy breath despite his cracked ribs, but nothing more than a rumble from his subvocals came out. He wanted to say her name, tell her he was ok, warn her not to do anything brash, but the words wouldn't come. He wasn't even sure he was ok. He couldn't be sure of the extent of his injuries, he had been pushed too far to the edges of consciousness to be sure of what had happened to him. Or how much time had passed.

“Kaetus, don't move. I've got you”. Her voice returned to It's normal pitch as she calmed, reassured that he was alive. Her leather gloves were rough and painful, and he felt a sickening lurch as flashes of the torture came back- peeling his plating off as he screamed…

“Shit, shit, shit”. Sloane cursed as she gingerly hooked her arm around his carapace. “Kaetus, can you walk if you lean on me? Don't try to speak, just nod”. He flexed his feet hesitantly, testing the muscles. The skin on his left shin was burning, and he was pretty sure the right ankle was broken from hobbling. As much as it hurt his pride, he shook his head no. He was sure his legs would collapse if he tried.

“Ok. That's Ok. I'll carry you”. If any other human had said that, he'd laugh at the impossibility. But this was different. It was Sloane. She could carry a Turian if she needed to.

He was still reeling from the ordeal, so everything was still blurred at the edges, but he knew his torturers had dumped him right in front of the Outcast' s HQ. He had no clue how Sloane had know he was there, covered in blue, but there she was, lifting him up with that brute strength of hers. She slung him over her shoulder, gently as she could, and carried him through base, to the far back where she slept. It was tiny, a small, one room kitchenette, but it was the safest place in the base, no windows or maintenance hatches for intruders to enter. Anyone who wanted to kill Sloane in her sleep would get shot the moment they managed to hack the door open.

She brought him to her bed-just barely big enough for two. There wasn't a single position that didn't leave him in pain, so he didn't struggle when white heat seared up his side where he lay.

He had his eyes squeezed shut to try to block it out, but it didn't help. He heard Sloane rifling around her cabinets, cursing as she searched for medical supplies to patch him up. He risked a look at her when she came to his side and wondered if he'd die here, on her bed, and if this would be his last time to see her face. Her brows furrowed in focus as she reached for his torso with medi-gel covered gauze and gingerly dabbed his open wounds. He sucked in a gasp with the initial sting, then exhaled in relief as the numbness spread.

She worked quickly, patching and wrapping from his torso out to his limbs. She set the broken ankle without warning _and spirits did that hurt_ , and injected it with medi-gel before wrapping it with a makeshift splint. Then she placed a pill in his mouth, and he didn't really care what it was, just hoped it was strong enough to knock him out. Spirits, how long had it been since he slept? They'd taken turns keeping him awake and he'd drifted in and out of consciousness, but fuck, he needed real sleep.

When all was done, he felt his body untense as the pain reliever took hold and finally let sleep, rather than unconsciousness, take him.

***

“Sloane?” He spoke finally, after 16 hours of on and off sleep, peppered with moans of pain and delerious mumblings. His voice was weak and unsure, like he didn't know if she was real.

“Finally,” she groaned, rubbing her stiff neck as she sat up in her chair. She'd dozed off a couple of times, nearly panicked each time Kaetus's breathing stalled. After the initial shock of finding him nearly bled out on her doorstep, further examination showed he had multiple cracked ribs, a leg spur that had been broken off, a mandible that had been cut off with surgical precision, various plating that had been flayed off, and more cuts and bruises than she could count.

Sloane had a temper, but the sight had left her with more fury than she'd ever known.

“Sloane,” he said with more certainty, though his flanged voice was hoarse. “Wha-”

“Shut up,” she interrupted. “Shut up and keep still. The collective did a fucking number on you”.

“The Collective?” he asked, voice regaining It's timbre. Sloane held a bottle of water to his lips and he hesitantly drank. “No, no…” he blinked, looking up at her with confusion. “It was… Ramsey. Ramsey and…” his brow furrowed in frustration, as though he struggled to remember.

“I know. Ramsey, Vardush, and Alvea”. She finished for him. “I got a helpful message from the Charlatan bragging about their fucking moles”. She clenched her first as hot anger bubbled up in her chest. Her own fucking people. She had trusted them, damnit.

“They drugged me,” Kaetus recalled. His eyes darted away from her gaze as he spoke. “I didn't see it coming, not until the needle was already in my neck”. His voice was tired, so tired.

“That was four fucking days ago, Kaetus. I've been going out of my goddamn mind looking for you. I asked Ramsey to look, can you believe it? The whole time, she knew. Knew where you were, what was happening… Jesus. You have no idea how angry I am. At them. At myself for trusting them”. Sloane looked away from him, in shame or guilt or something like it.

“They didn't get you…” he said, as though he were just now realizing it. “They kept saying you were a dead woman… That the Charlatan would-” he coughed midsentence and winced in pain.

“Would you shut up already? For fuck's sake…” Sloane wearily grabbed a bottle of whiskey and took a chug. What a fucking rotten day. What a fucking rotten year and a half.

“We need a plan”.

“I have a plan,” she leaned forward and inspected the bandages on his shoulder, where the worst of the plate flaying had occurred. The blue had finally stopped oozing and had mostly clotted.

“Sloane…” he protested weakly. He knew her better than anyone. He could figure out pretty quickly that her plan involved the Charlatan and her assault rifle.

“They want to end this, they said in the message. Once and for all. And nothing would bring me greater pleasure than to end them. Except maybe to torture them half as much as what they had done to you”.

“Sloane, you are not going out there alone”. Kaetus started to lean forward but quickly collapsed back in pain.

“You're a real fucking nag, you know that? Whatever, you're in no position to stop me anyway”. She stood and put her back to him as she reassembled her rifle on the counter.

“No, no. Sloane, _please_ ”. He begged. Pathetically. To see him like this, it was making her see red.

“What do you want from me, Kaetus?” she pleaded desperately. “I can't take any of our people. I can't trust them anymore. I can't trust anyone. They'll just as likely shoot me in the back as the Charlatan”. She pounded a fist on the counter and hung her head. “After everything. The riots. The exile. The Kett. I took this place, I _earned_ it, and now…” she choked back the lump in her throat, now even more angry that tears, of all things, threatened to undo her.

“Sloane. It doesn't have to be one of our people”. He said flatly.

She laughed bitterly. “What, the Nexus? You're high”.

“The Pathfinder”.

“No”. She replied high handedly.

“Sloane, she's a safe bet. Safer than anyone else or going alone…” he sucked in a breath suddenly, clearly in pain.

“Fuck. Fucking hell”. She pulled out another painkiller, hating the idea of drugging him up, but he was a bloody wreck. He was a tough son of a bitch, but seeing him suffering was too much. “Just take this and go back to sleep. We'll talk more when you wake up”.

He turned his face away from the pill as she held it to his mouth. “Promise you won't go alone. _Promise_ , Sloane”.

“Fine. I won't. Jesus Christ”. She slipped the pill in his mouth at first chance and gave him more water.

It was two hours later, when he was fast asleep and had finally stopped stirring I pain, that she considered his suggestion. Sara Ryder was a kid, but she was tough in a fight. Reliable, even. But trustworthy? She was Nexus, sort of. Her trustworthiness was up in the air, along with the loyalty of every one of her outcasts. But maybe, just maybe Kaetus was right.

Against her better judgement, she composed and sent a brief message to Sara Ryder before she could change her mind.

***

Kaetus woke up alone.

_Shit, shit shit,_  was all he could think. He was in pain, but coherent now. The pain was still hell, but the pills had worn off and he was feeling a little more normal, even with half of his left mandible missing. But he was also  feeling panicked, worried that Sloane had gone off to face the Collective alone. Shit.

He slowly sat up, ignoring the searing pain in every muscle. What time was it? What _day_ was it? He glanced around to get his bearings. There was a pistol on the small table within reach of the bed. He leaned forward and grasped it. He froze when he heard steps outside and watched the door unlock. His hand was shaking as he held his breath, hoping it was friend, not foe, entering.

“Fuck, Kaetus, what the hell are you doing?” Sloane entered the room with a brown cloth bag.

“I just woke up… Thought you were gone, saw the pistol and figured I should-ow,” he groaned mid sentence as he tried to lean back against the wall.

“You've been out of it for 8 hours, but it figures you'd wake up the twenty minutes I'm gone”. She tossed some dextro rations onto the bed next to him and sat beside him against the wall. “Eat. You've only had water for the last day. And probably nothing for four days before that”. She pulled out her own Levo ration bar and started eating beside him.

  
They sat like that, in silence, for some time. Kaetus's jaw ached from taking more than a few punches to the face, but he powered through and chewed his tasteless rations. He set down his bar, determined to eat slowly so as not to overwhelm his stomach after so long without food. He stared at Sloane, who was looking off into the distance. She looked more tired than he'd seen in ages.

“What?” she asked, sharp and angry, feeling his gaze without looking at him. He just leaned back in silence, staring into the distance with her. She let out an exasperated sigh, and spoke with less irritation. “I talked your goddamed Pathfiner. Just finished, actually. She's bringing a squad to this navpoint”. She brought up Kaetus's map on her omnitool and showed him the coordinates. “I'm meeting them there in an hour”.

“Thank you, Sloane,” he said softly.

“Yeah, yeah. Won't do me a lick of good. Kid's as green as they come”.

“Better than nothing”.

She leaned forward and stood, adjusting the pistol at her side. “I'm going now. This ends, one way or another. The Collective will pay in blood”.

He watched in silence as she prepped her gear. She had a determination, a defiance about her. Kaetus couldn't decide if it was good or bad. Confidence, or arrogance. She wordlessly keyed open the door and started to step out.

“Sloane”. She stopped, not looking back.

“Yeah?” her voice was steady, but he knew her too well to be fooled by that.

_I love you,_  he almost said.

Instead, he settled on, “Try not to die out there".

She laughed, a sound he hadnt heard often enough since leaving the Milky Way. “Try not to bleed out while I'm gone,” she replied without looking back. He thought that maybe she would walk out right away, but instead she hesitated, hand on the door. “I'm locking it from the inside. Keep that pistol close, in case anyone comes for you”.

He nodded, even though she wasn't looking at him, and she finally walked out the door.

He sat in the lonesome silence, pistol to his left, ration bars and water bottles to his right.

It felt like goodbye. He hoped it wasn't.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little one shot of these two. I intentionally left it off where I did, ambiguous as to your choice at the end of the High Noon quest. Though, if you're curious, I saved Sloane in my canon playthrough and have no regrets about it (No offense to the Reyes lovers out there!)
> 
> So, I haven't read all of Nexus Uprising, just the first few chapters, so hopefully I didn't get things too out of character/canon.
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr!
> 
> https://sweetorangepoptart.tumblr.com/
> 
> https://redheadedbiotic.tumblr.com/


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